26
THE ASIATIC EI'IDEMIC OP 1817-21.
say 210,000. The number of ascertained cases, 15,945, wHcli gives the proportion of attacks of the disease for the population at 7| per cent.
We must now return to Nagpore, where, as already observed, cholera had made its appearance among the inhabitants of the city and neighbouring villages in May.
Throughout the early part of the year 1818, a con- siderable body of Bengal and Madras troops had been engaged in the siege of Chundah, a town situated some seventy miles south of Nagpore. The men employed in the arduous operations of this siege escaped the cholera, notwithstanding the excessive heat and many privations they had to undergo. Their work having been accomplished, they were ordered to March to Kagpore, and on the 30th of May arrived at Gaongong, a village nine miles south of the city. " Here they had hardly learnt that the epidemic was raging in the vicinity, when they began themselves to experience its unwelcome visits. As usual, its first assaults were most severe. Many of those attacked, whilst loitering for water in the neighbouring rivulets, were brought in expiring ; <some dead. Of seventy cases admitted during that night and the succeeding day, about twenty died. On the 31st the instances of attack were equally numerous ; but in these the exhaustion was not so sudden, and the subsequent symptoms were less severe. On the 1st of June, the division moved from ISfagpore towards the Cantonments of Hoshunga- bad. The disease then gradually dechned, and almost entu-ely disappeared on the 17th and 18th after some seasonable falls of rain."*
Early in June the cholera had reached Hingumghat, fifty miles to the south of Wagpore, and a few days
- Jameson's ' Report,' p. xxiii.
